Watching the tv series “Grimm” tonight, reminded me that we all have a frame of reality that we were taught long ago.

As children we were conditioned to perceive things in a certain way. We were taught by our families, our culture, our friends, and our particular religion, to accept certain realities and to reject others.

Any reality which we were conditioned to reject, was programmed into our subconscious as basically invisible.

We were conditioned to create certain associations about types of people. The brain can sum up a stranger in a manner of seconds based on the way they are dressed, their body language, and the way they speak.

This subconscious categorizing of people can protect you from danger and guide you towards the right person to ask for help. But not all of the things we were taught were correct.

Some lessons were taught to us by misguided, though well meaning, family members, friends and teachers. People tend to hold onto whatever they were taught growing up. Therefore they pass the same biases and inaccuracies down to the next generation.

Each generation then tried to assess and rearrange their own thoughts and beliefs to fit their own situations, but there is often a lot of bleeding over of false beliefs from one generation to the next.

While grouping certain types of people into “safe” and “unsafe” categories can serve us to a great degree, it can also lead us right into danger. It can also lead us away from people that would benefit our lives if we got to know them.

Your intuition is always your best and first line of defense. It also can suggest to you to go in a certain direction, even when you’ve been conditioned not to.

But typically we are taught to ignore our intuition…our gut feelings…and lean towards whatever biases we were brought up with.

Depending on what kind of parents you had growing up, you might have been given a feeling of independence and confidence in your own judgement. But that’s not always the case.

You may have had parents that were controlling and manipulative. They may have intentionally crushed down your confidence, as well as your faith in your intuition. They may have programmed you to believe that their opinions were somehow superior to your own senses.

You may have even been intentionally mislead about how to assess the people that you meet, as far as who to trust and who to run from.

Whether it was intentional or not, the things you learned as a child were taken in by your brain and processed at the age level that they were given to you. Then those beliefs were reinforced, or even contradicted to confuse you, at various ages growing up.

No matter what, the things you learned about your world as a child, must be re-evaluated as an adult.

We cannot rely on what we were taught as children.

We cannot rely on what parents with a hidden agenda, or even good – intentioned parents conditioned us to believe.

We most certainly cannot rely on our own interpretation as a child, on those same things that were taught to us.

As adults, we must identify what beliefs are being held in our subconscious. Then we need to evaluate the truth of those beliefs. We also need to decide which of those beliefs are serving us well, and which ones might actually be harming us.

Our brain will find simple ways of making judgements because it’s faster and takes up less energy and time. If we don’t consciously think about things, we will go right to the associations that were conditioned into us as children.

No one ever told us to re-check these associations as adults. The people that wanted certain beliefs and biases programmed into you will probably not come forward and tell you to re-evaluate them for yourselves now.

The end result is a tendency to change the facts right in front of you, in order to make them fit your beliefs.

The better option is to look at the facts realistically, and then to re – evaluate your beliefs to fit the facts.

When you alter the facts, reframe the facts, disregard what you see to be true, or generalize things to fit what you were taught, you are in danger of more brainwashing, and mind control.

You are in danger of letting that “perfect stranger” right into your house, because you were taught to categorize them as safe, when they may be exactly to opposite. Even if your gut is telling you to keep away, your subconscious belief system is pushing you to make quick associations.

You can miss opportunities that might be really good for your future, because you were taught to be suspicious of certain things, or you were told time and time again that “someone like you” can’t achieve certain things.

Maybe you were taught that “someone like you” can’t attract certain kinds of people. Maybe you were covertly conditioned that certain types of friends or jobs are out of your reach.

Possibly, someone was trying to protect you from disappointment, because they were infused with the same beliefs …. that they could not have certain things, or attract certain kinds of people who are “better” than they are.

Or maybe someone conditioned you to deny yourself opportunities because they actually had some hidden agenda for keeping you sheltered from knowing what you can actually do in your life. Maybe they wanted to keep your self esteem low, so they could wield a certain degree of control over you.

It could be that a teacher you had was the one that taught you to “stay in your place” to the degree that you are still holding a subconscious belief that you actually have a “place” or a status that you were born to stay in.

As adults, we need to re-teach ourselves. We need to re – train our brains to see what we see, and to believe things based on what we discover to be true.

As creative beings, we have the right to our passion and our personal inspiration.

You have a right to your dreams, your visions and to realize any talents that you think you might have.

Also remember that your intuition is there to serve you. If someone or something doesn’t feel right, then it probably isn’t.

If something feels like its calling you, then don’t give up and run the other way just because someone once told you that those kinds of dreams are for some other kind of person.

Protect yourself and prioritize your needs and desires, rather than always strive to fit within whatever box you were told was yours to fit into.

Let yourself let go of whatever mental chains were placed on you at a young age.

Love others who deserve your love. Help others when you can, but not to the point where you are being used and exploited.

If it’s walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck.